2025 Emerging Curator Mentorship: compost : compose by Rasha Tayeh
Allara, mohamed chamas, Yusuke Akai
1–21 Dec 2025
Each year Blindside facilitates an Emerging Curator Mentorship programme, where an emerging curator is mentored by a leading Naarm arts professional.
For the 2025 iteration of the programme we have partnered with Next Wave. Emerging curator Rasha Tayeh has been selected, to be mentored by Next Wave CEO Elyse Goldfinch, to realise the next iteration of her ongoing arts project: compost : compose.
compost : compose is an arts project created by artist–curator Rasha Tayeh, hosting discussions, exhibitions, performances, and pop-up events across various ecologies and geographies. Taking inspiration from the soil, the project invites artists to consider how we can compost old structures, tend to grief, and decompose inherited ways of thinking, doing, and being—towards composing new imaginaries for reparative futures and collective liberation.
In this gallery, Rasha presents cyanotype prints created between June and August 2025 during her artist residency at The Wonder Cabinet in Bethlehem, occupied Palestine. These works form a series of botanical photograms made from plants gathered in The Wonder Cabinet’s garden, the Palestine Museum of Natural History, the street that links the two, and the neighbouring village of Battir.
The prints were created both in Rasha’s studio and its garden, while windows shook, bombs fell nearby, and questions about life cycles, composting, and regeneration reverberated against the reality of genocide under a brutal Israeli military occupation.
Some cyanotypes have been toned with black tea. All were made without a camera, using light-sensitive paper, plant material, and elements collected during fieldwork across the Bethlehem area.
Through leaves, seeds, flowers, feathers, bones, and the histories that lie within the soil, this evolving project reflects on dis/placement, memory, land ownership, land use, and location data—shaping both its political and poetic dimensions.
This studio also operates as a development space for artists collaborating with Rasha on the next iteration of compost : compose, as part of the Emerging Curator Mentorship programme in partnership with Next Wave. Participating artists; Allara, Mohamed Chamas, and Yusuke Akai, will present a performance-based work in February 2026 at Brunswick Mechanics Institute.
* Image: Scanned Cyanotype Prints, created by Rasha Tayeh in Bethlehem, Palestine 2025
Each year Blindside facilitates an Emerging Curator Mentorship programme, where an emerging curator is mentored by a leading Naarm arts professional.
For the 2025 iteration of the project we have partnered with Next Wave. Rasha Tayeh has been chosen, to be mentored by Next Wave CEO Elyse Goldfinch, to realise the next iteration of her ongoing arts project: compost : compose. Rasha has selected 3 artists to undertake a closed development period at Blindside: Allara, Yusuke Akai and mohamed chamas; and has installed an exhibition/ created an open studio in Gallery 2. This will lead to public programs at Next Wave in early 2026.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Allara
Allara is a staunch Yorta Yorta artist - songwoman, bassist, producer and sound-designer. Living on
Wurundjeri, Woi-Wurrung Country for almost 15 years, her motivation is driven by a hope of healing and
self-determination. Her fire within, is ignited by the resilience of yenbana-l and woka-n mulana. Allara’s
unrelenting commitment to collapse colonial structures, inspires her work in all fields, and is based in
growing native knowledge resurgence, through wholehearted blak joy... AND crop dusting seeds of
resistance, in every corner of every lawn. F**K the colony.
mohamed chamas
mohamed chamas has been called a poet and new media artist {among many other things either
erroneous or partially-correct}. Mohamed re-enchants subjective worlds from the space between heresy
and miracle, where sacred rage and ecstatic dissolution are invited. Mohamed agitates language,
cyberspace, gamification, the military-entertainment complex, occult studies and spirituality. They defy
form dancing with hybridity across poetry, live visuals, interactive work, image, video, spatial installation
and sculpture. Namely they create interactive VR work that is activated by ceremonial performance and/or
spatial altar. Their work has been witnessed through platforms like Debris Magazine, Emerging Writers
Festival, Mars Gallery, Incinerator Gallery, Seventh Gallery and 7 news.
Yusuke Akai Ysk, born Yusuke Akai, was born in 1983 in Tokyo, Japan. As a guitarist, drummer, modular synthesist, composer, bandleader and educator, Ysk has extensive performance experiences across Eurasia in places such as Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Netherlands, Germany, Scotland, France, Belgium and more. Ysk has been awarded with numerous grants and artist residencies from institutions such as Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland, AsiaLink, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Polytechnic etc.. Their recent composition commissions have been delivered for ensembles such as Australian Art Orchestra, SuperFeather, Taste of Teeth, Sky Voltage, Brett Evans Quartet and various film and theatre projects. Ysk considers their boxing, capoeira, and dance practices as relevant to the musical outputs. Also relevant are the social, cultural, and political worldviews and the continuous learning and analyses of the selves and contexts.
Rasha Tayeh / Elyse Goldfinch / Next WaveRasha Tayeh is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, researcher, herbalist and founding director of Beit e’Shai Teahouse. Her practice is land-based , focusing on telling stories about people’s relationships in community & ecology. With over 20 years experience as an exhibiting artist in Australia and abroad, and through her pop-up teahouse since 2017, Rasha has curated and hosted a range of art exhibitions, workshops, community events, live gigs and listening sessions, tea ceremonies and poetry nights.
Elyse Goldfinch is a curator and writer living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. She is currently CEO at Next Wave, a leading not-for-profit arts organisation that plays a pivotal role in supporting early-career artists working across multiple art forms.Most recently Elyse was Curator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art where her curatorial projects included Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed (2025), Tennant Creek Brio: Juparnta Ngattu Minjinypa Iconocrisis (2024), From the other side (2023-24), and Lucy Guerin: NEWRETRO (2023). Previously, Elyse was co-Chair, Firstdraft; Associate Curator, Artspace Sydney; part of the Curatorial Team, Australian Pavilion at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia; and Coordinator for Contemporary Arts Organisations Australia. Elyse has published widely on contemporary art for Ocula, Art & Australia, un Magazine and Art Collector, as well as written and edited print publications for institutions including National Gallery of Australia, Artspace, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and Manly Art Gallery & Museum.
Next Wave’s vision is a world shaped by artists. Next Wave is a leading not-for-profit arts organisation dedicated to supporting early-career artists working across multiple art forms. Next Wave plays a defining role in the Australian arts landscape by empowering and advocating for early-career and experimental artistic practice in Australia. Through mentorships, creative developments, public programs, events, live performances and partnerships, Next Wave creates spaces for gathering and exchange, ambition and experimentation, and meaningful community connections. Established in 1984 as a biennial Festival, Next Wave now runs a year-long program from our home at Brunswick Mechanics Institute, in Naarm/Melbourne. As Next Wave continues to evolve in response to the changing nature of artist and sector needs, its commitment to investing in and nurturing artists at the most critical stage of their career remains constant. Next Wave’s program enables artists and audiences to test ideas and push boundaries that embrace new perspectives, challenge our thinking and platform the next generation of cultural leaders.